Six journalism hopefuls have been awarded bursaries to help pay for their training, as part of the new Journalism Diversity Fund.

The charitable fund was created last year in a bid to attract more people from ethnically and socially diverse backgrounds into the industry, and the first candidates have now been chosen.

Each of the recipients will begin courses - accredited by the National Council for the Training of Journalists - at either Nottingham Trent University, West Kent College, London's noSWeat training centre, the University of Central Lancashire or Sheffield College, later this year.

The fund is managed and adminstered by the NCTJ and was set up with the help of the Newspaper Licensing Agency, which donated £100,000.

Media groups including Pearson, Guardian Media Group, Associated Newspapers and News International have also contributed to the fund.

The launch followed a survey by the Society of Editors which found that newspapers in areas of high minority ethnic population in general had no better records in recruiting minority ethnic editorial staff than any others.

It was not unusual to find just one non-white reporter among news staff in an area where the population at large might be 20 per cent non-white.

In the study, editors complained that they did not receive applications from the minority ethnic communities and that journalism courses at colleges and universities also failed to recruit significantly from the minority ethnic communities.